‘There you go, love and marriage. That’s where you are heading’

How the other half lives: Lucy Cavendish recieves some promising news
from a wizard

So I go to see the wizard. I am not sure why, really, but I think it might be something to do with Easter, new beginnings and all that. And at this point in my life, any hint of what might be before me could be helpful.

Anyway, I have managed to capture the children, who have been running a fluffy dog from the B&B up and down a path behind the house most of the morning. ‘He’s a pomerdoodle,’ the dog’s owner told us. Now I am sitting in the wizard’s consulting-room.

There’s a glass of water, a desk, a few wilted pot plants. I feel as if I am in a dentist’s waiting-room rather than a magical lair. I have left the children in the ‘holding bay’.

The wizard looks like a bank manager. He is also remarkably silent. He just takes my hands and then picks up a pack of tarot cards and starts laying them out. The first one is Death. I rear back a bit. The wizard gives me a look.

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Well, it’s over now. He’s free and happy.’ ‘Who is?’ I say. The wizard raises an eyebrow. ‘Your friend,’ he says. ‘You have to let it go.’

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I sit there feeling slightly shocked. How on earth could he know that? Then he lays out more cards, a selection of cups, wands, swords. He nods as he lays them down. Then, a man.

‘The King of Cups,’ he says, giving me a meaningful look. ‘Here he is. Look at him. He is the one you will meet.’

‘Right,’ I say, sounding uncertain. ‘This is wonderful. He is kind, funny, inspiring. He has children. He is divorced. He is either foreign or he has travelled a lot.’

I laugh. ‘Don’t tell me, he is tall, dark and handsome.’ The wizard nods. ‘Yes, he is actually and…’ He turns over two more cards and smiles. ‘There you go, love and marriage. That’s where you are heading.’

I sit there, stunned. I can barely register anything. Just then my daughter bursts in, lifts up her dress and waggles her bottom. There is a strange bulge in the front of her rosebud-covered knickers. ‘When I put a sock down my knickers, Mama,’ she says, ‘I look like a boy, don’t I?’